It's official: women do need more sleep than men!

That age-old excuse about us girls needing to get our beauty sleep may actually be true, according to a new study.

In truth it's not beauty sleep we need, but a night of uninterrupted sleep, if we want to perform better than men in the workplace. As if we needed another battle to ensue between the sexes!

The study, conducted by the Sleep Research Centre at the university of Surrey, found that men are much better than women at coping with daily tasks when their circadian rhythm (24-hour biological cycle) is thrown out of sync.

Disrupted sleep patterns are more likely to effect women in the workplace, than their counterpart male colleagues, experts revealed.

The study found that women tend to feel more tired, make less of an effort and perform worse in cognitive tests requiring memory or accuracy, if their regular bedtime routines are disrupted. Men, in comparison, scored much higher in performance tests, deeming them better at coping with having to work night shifts.

The research, published in the journal PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences), monitored 16 women and 18 men, controlling their sleep patterns on 28-hour a day cycles. Without natural light-dark cycles, they disrupted the body's natural, synchronised sleep cycle to create a feeling in the brain similar to jet lag or when you work erratic shift patterns.

The researchers then measured the effects by asking each gender to perform a wide range of tests every three hours during the awake period.

Out of the 39 tests, the male participants scored higher on 28, indicating that the disruption of the body's circadian rhythm affects female hormones much more than they do in men.

Brain electric activity was also monitored constantly during sleep, with results indicating that the sleep-deprived female brain acts significantly more erratic than the male.

The results could have a profound effect on shift workers and those who travel long distances and are susceptible to jet lag. The findings suggest that women are more affected by night shifts than men, so men could become the preferred choice when it comes to whittling down job applicants.

But for women who don't work late shifts, it could quite simply mean that if we haven't got our full eight hours – we've got a medical argument that it's time for a snooze!